A popular pastime of many social justice warriors is railing on video games and the people who play them. They throw around labels like “misogynerd,” just because some women in some games have large breasts.
But there’s another more obvious target for an anti-sexism crusade that is almost completely ignored: hip hop.
Note: I am a huge fan of hip hop and would never wish the scourge of social justice culture criticism upon it. But given the content of the lyrics and music videos found in the genre, it is baffling that there would not be an outcry by the social justice crowd.
Just look at this 2012 2 Chainz video, “Birthday Song,” with the chorus “All I want for my birthday is a big booty hoe.” The video has enough problematic elements to make a purple-haired Tumblrina’s head explode.
But instead we get a cavalcade of articles calling Overwatch sexist because some of the strong fighting women in the game are wearing form fitting clothing.
So, why the cognitive dissonance? In the ’90s, culture warriors campaigned against video games and hip hop simultaneously. They were peas in the same raunchy pod.
Jack Thompson was the most prominent censorship crusader of the decade. He began by trying to get albums of groups like NWA banned on obscenity charges and tried to get Time Warner charged with sedition for promoting Ice-T’s song “Cop Killer.” Thompson griped that hip hop promoted objectification and violence against women.
Then for some reason he got bored and moved on to railing against video games, using the same false logic that fictional content would cause kids to commit real acts of violence and sexism.
Not much has changed since the days of Jack Thompson, except the campaign for artistic censorship has been adopted by the far left — and inexplicably dropped hip hop.
There could be a few reasons for this. First of all, gamers and geek culture in general are seen as easy targets. They are perceived as indoorsy nerds who were bullied in high school. Perfect subjects to put up little resistance to those seeking to browbeat their hobby into submission (of course, the events of Gamergate proved that not to be the case). But compared to the hyper-masculine hip hop culture, geeks are certainly the easier victim.
Another aspect is race. Hip hop is inextricably black, born out of a resistance to authority, namely the police. Many prominent rappers today are staunch advocates of Black Lives Matter and their songs contain lyrics protesting police brutality. So does that give the entire genre a pass? For every “To Pimp a Butterfly” there are still dozens of songs about big booty women.
Regardless of the reason, the silence by sexism crusaders in the media and on social media is hypocritical. If they truly believe that everything is sexist and you have to call it all, why go easy on hip hop? And if you’re reading this, social justice warriors, please don’t take this as a call to action.
Follow me on Twitter @William__Hicks.
